The members-only ratification vote will take place online from 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, September 1, through 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 8. If you’ve never voted in one of our online elections before, check out our How to Vote on the eZone tip sheet. (Note: If you log in from a mobile device and just see a blank screen, select “full site” to see the voting options.) Information about in-person voting can be found in our August 30 blog post.

If you have any questions before the vote, feel free to ask them here. If you are not currently a dues-paying member but would like to vote on the contract, you may sign and submit a membership card here.

**Note: A couple of members have been confused by the “pay for work on holidays” entry at the bottom of this chart. There has been no change to holiday pay! (See Article 11 of the contract.) The entry refers only to the fact that we had asked for holiday pay for salaried employees (which would be new for them) and didn’t get it.

My last day of employment at OHSU is 9/13. I gave my director over 2 months notice in order to help with the hiring/training of my replacement. I understand we did not receive our annual pay increase due to the contract negotiations. Will I still receive the lump sum payment given to all employees if it is ratified? If not, will there be a back-payment for the hours I worked? If I calculated right, my last paycheck will be on 9/20.

My understanding is that the lump sum will be paid out during the second full pay period after ratification. So if we approve the contract on 9/8 the lump sum would be included in the 10/18/2019 paycheck.

So the question is how does OHSU handle employees that separate employment between 9/8 and 9/29? (I assume anyone who was employed during the lump sum pay period, 9/30-10/13, would get it.)

I would think you should get it, but you know the devil is in the details.

For the additional vacation day, can you elaborate?
Specifically, is this a permanent (for the length of the contract) increase in our rate per paid regular hour (so we will accrue vacation time at a slightly faster rate with each pay period) or is this a once-annual “drop” into our banks?

I’m sorry it fell off my radar to get back to you. Yes, relief employees are eligible to receive a prorated lump-sum payment. Here’s the legalese from the tentative agreeement: “For employees without an FTE, their lump sum payment will be calculated based on an imputed FTE as of the date of ratification, using the FTE calculation that is used to determine their eligibility for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act.” In slightly more understandable lay terms, this means that OHSU will calculate their FTE using the same method used to calculate their FTE used to calculate their ACA eligibility.

A somewhat complicated follow up question:
Is this regardless of how long they’ve been employed? i.e. If the employee began working one pay period prior to ratification, but worked 30hrs per week for those two weeks, they would get 0.75FTE designation as it relates to the bonus? Or is there some minimum number of hours/months/pay periods they would have needed to work to qualify. For the ACA look back, I believe it has historically been 6 months…

You can vote as long as you’re a dues-paying member. For someone who’s really new and just signed their membership card, there can be a lag between signing and showing up in the system as a member, which might cause an issue during online voting. If any member tries to vote online and has difficulties, please reach out to us ASAP and we’ll get things taken care of. Folks can also vote in person—I’ve just posted a flyer with information about the in-person voting dates and locations.

Hopefully this helps: Search for “compensation plan” on O2 and download the FY20 spreadsheet. Find the row for your job classification, then look down the row until you find the number(s) closest to your current hourly wage. Look up to see which quartile you fall under—the shown above will be what your progression increase should be.

Using Accountant 1 (the first classification in the spreadsheet) as an example, if the employee is currently making $26.00/hour, they fall under Q3 (third quartile) and would receive a 2.0% increase. If they’re making $22.00/hour, they fall under Q1 and would receive a 4.0% increase.

Thanks Jennifer…for the info about locating the compensation plan on O2 and for making a plethora of information and documents available on this blog throughout the entire bargaining process. I admit I never spent much time here before the recent contract negotiations, but it has been so helpful and eye-opening. I appreciate all that the bargaining team has done and all the efforts and comments that my fellow union members have contributed as well.

I couldn’t attend the last AFSCME townhall and finally had a chance to listen to the parts I missed. Please pass along a huge thanks to Karyn for explaining what happened in that last session with the mediator. I had no idea what typically transpires in a bargaining session or when interacting with a mediator, but her deeply personal account really hit home. Maybe someday she can teach us ALL the wave!

Thanks, Lori. We plan to keep sharing plenty of information on the blog and using this space to keep an open line of communication with our members. And I’ll definitely pass along your comment to Karyn.

Hello, I am on maternity leave until November 2019 but have been employed with OHSU for over five years. I am wondering if I will still receive the lump sum payment even though I am on FMLA/ OFLA unpaid leave? Also, are we going to receive our pay increases that were postponed due to the negotiations?

I believe you would still be eligible to receive the lump-sum payment. The amount of the payment will be prorated based on FTE, though, and I’m not knowledgeable enough about leaves to know if being in an unpaid status changes one’s FTE at all. If you’d like a more concrete answer, I think the compensation group in HR would probably have the most accurate information—they’re at hrcomp@ or 4-8060. The 3.25% across-the-board wage increase will take effect shortly after the contract is ratified. (It won’t be retro to July, though—the lump-sum payment is intended to offset that, and for most employees it’ll be higher than the retro amount would have been.)